She is an American poet. Her list of occupations includes night-club dancer and performer, cast member of the opera Porgy and Bess, coordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, author and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the days of decolonization. She released several albums of Calypso music in the 1950s, including Miss Calypso (pictured). In 1993. She recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, becoming the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961.
2) Who was He?
A skilled mountaineer, he reached the summit of the Eiger and in 1897 made the first guideless ascent of the Mönch in the Bernese Alps. He later made unsuccessful attempts to reach the summits of Kangchenjunga and K2. In 1915, while working as a double agent for British intelligence services, he declared independence for Ireland in front of the Statue of Liberty.
3) Whose Father?
He was a contract killer involved in organised crime. He was convicted of the 1979 assassination of federal judge John H. Wood, Jr., the first federal judge killed in the 20th century. In a television interview he claimed to have been involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He is the estranged father of which actor?
4) Who was He?
In typically laconic style, he wrote a play called Play and his only screenplay was called Film.
Film, released in 1966, was Buster Keaton’s second last film role. Who was the writer?
5) Who Was He?
"The Lost Lexicographer”
This devilishly acerbic American satirist went missing in Mexico in 1913 while travelling with Pancho Villa’s rebel troops during the Mexican Revolution. He coined the immortal line, “War is God’s way of teaching Americans geography.”
6) Who is He?
He was a former Green Beret and Vietnam veteran. He spent 18 months as a prisoner of war after being captured at The Battle of Khe Sanh. Which prominent senior educator was known as Armin Tamzarian before he changed his name?
7) Who is He?
He is an American contemporary street artist and graphic designer who emerged from the skateboarding scene. He first became known for his "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" sticker campaign. He became widely known during the 2008 U.S. presidential election for his Barack Obama "Hope" poster.
8) Who is He?
He is a notoriously uncompromising New York filmmaker. His movies include The Driller Killer (1979), Ms. 45 (1981), King of New York (1990), Bad Lieutenant (1992) and The Funeral (1996).
9) Who was He?
He was a French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist, art critic and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in Paris during Baron Haussmann’s renovations in the 19th century. He is credited with coining the term "modernity" (modernité) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility of art to capture that experience.
10) Who was She?
She was an American athlete who achieved outstanding success in three sports. She was an all-American basketball player. She won two gold medals and one silver medal for track and field in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics. She took up golf in 1935 and won 17 straight women's amateur victories. By 1950, she had won every women’s golf title available including 3 US Opens.
Round 2
Siamese Twins
In this round there are clues to the identity of 2 separate individuals. The surname of the first is the forename of the last. I’d like you to conjoin them for a three part answer worth two points. I need all three names to secure both points. There are no points for part answers. For example:
Q) I’m looking for the American singer-songwriter who released the 1986 album Graceland and the principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic?
A) Paul Simon Rattle.
1) The second US President to win the Nobel Peace Prize (for his sponsorship of the League of Nations) and the American R&B and soul singer whose biggest hit was In the Midnight Hour.
2) The driver of the car that crashed in Paris in 1997, killing Princess Diana, Dodi Fayed & himself and the Dutch-born director of such cinematic classics as Robocop, Basic Instinct and my personal favourite, Showgirls.
3) The Welsh fashion designer who, along with his then wife Elizabeth, designed the wedding dress worn by Princess Diana in 1981 and the real name of the American modernist artist and photographer Man Ray.
4) The author of Daniel Deronda & Silas Marner and the leader of the legendary team of law enforcement agents known as The Untouchables.
5) The former husband of Pamela Anderson, drummer of glam metal band Motley Crue and the so-called “father of method acting in America”, director of the legendary Actors Studio.
6)The Victorian English liberal political theorist who coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” and the only British Prime Minister to be assassinated, shot dead in the lobby of the House of Commons in 1812.
7) The American fashion designer, former creative director of Gucci and Yves Saint Laurent, who made his debut as a film director with an adaption of Christopher Isherwood’s novel “A Single Man” and a Scottish comedian who starred in Chewin’ the Fat and Still Game.
8)The English artist known for his album covers for bands such as Yes & other progressive rock acts and one of the protagonists of Jack Kerouac’s beat literature classic On the Road.
9) The author of The Jungle (1906), an expose of harsh conditions in the US meat-packing industry and the first American winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1930).
10) The English actress best known as the resident singer of topical songs on the satirical TV show That Was The Week That Was and Frasier’s father in the long-running Seattle-based sitcom.
11) The 22nd President of Liberia, the man who allegedly gave blood diamonds to Naomi Campbell (he was sentenced to 50 years imprisonment in 2012 at The Hague for war crimes/crimes against humanity) and the former husband of Helen Mirren, the American who directed the movie An Officer and a Gentleman.
12) A singer-songwriter of questionable talent, former spouse of Katie Price and a Russian-born British physicist, joint winner of the 2010 Nobel prize in Physics for his work on graphene and the only man to have won both a Nobel and an IgNobel prize (the IgNobel was awarded in 2000 for his use of magnets to levitate a frog).
13) The actor who played George Costanza in Seinfeld and the Secretary to the Treasury under George Washington, who died from his wounds the day after a duel with Aaron Burr.
14) My first is a former member of The Fugees, a three times Grammy award-winning rapper, singer-songwriter, music producer and a candidate in the Haitian Presidential election of 2010. My second is the French postmodernist philosopher who wrote the controversial 1991 work The Gulf War Did Not Take Place.
Round 3
Hanging on the Telephone Photo Round
(It is the films that are required here, not the actors. 2 points per movie)
Round 4
Transportation Blues
1) In June 1926 the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi died after being struck by which kind of vehicle? There have been no recorded instances of this mode of conveyance killing anyone in Edinburgh since at least 1956.
2) Which train driver, later immortalised in a ballad recorded by Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger and many others and celebrated on TV and film, died when his locomotive The Cannonball Express collided with a stalled freight train in Vaughan, Mississippi in April 1900?
3) Which American painter, the creator of Blue Poles and other seminal works, died in 1956 after crashing his Oldsmobile convertible while driving under the influence of alcohol?
4) In 2010 the team bus of which national football team was attacked by gunmen as it travelled to the African Cup of Nations tournament in Angola?
5) A year earlier in 2009 which national cricket team’s bus was fired upon by militants as the bus was en route to a Test Match in Lahore, Pakistan?
6) He was one half of a famous duo, the epitaph on his tombstone reads “And the Beat Goes On.” Who was killed in a skiing accident at the appropriately named Heavenly Ski Resort in California in 1998?
7) He lost the original manuscript of his highly-acclaimed memoir Seven Pillars of Wisdom whilst changing trains at Reading Railway Station in 1919 and he survived a plane crash earlier the same year in which the pilot and co-pilot were killed. Who died in a motorcycle accident in Dorset in 1935?
8) In 1977, two weeks before his 30th birthday, Marc Bolan was killed in a car crash. Which singer, Bolan’s then girlfriend, survived the accident?
9) The grave of which poet, the victim of a boating accident in 1822, his ashes laid to rest in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, bears these appropriate lines from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: "Nothing of him that doth fade/ But doth suffer a sea-change/ Into something rich and strange!"?
10) The first African-born Nobel Laureate for Literature died in a car crash in France in 1960. Who was he?
Round 5
Going Out Together and First Lines
Farrah Fawcett’s death on 25th June 2009 was overshadowed by the death of Michael Jackson. The following questions are about other famous people who died on the same day. A point for each person identified.
1) On 23rd November 1963 newspaper coverage of the deaths of two famous writers (who both died the day before) was minimal, their passing understandably overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy in Dallas on 22nd November. One of the writers was Irish and one was English. Can you name them?
2) 29th July 1983 saw the deaths of two famous men, one an English actor of Scottish decent who won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1958 for his role as Major Pollock in Separate Tables, the other was a Spanish surrealist filmmaker who directed Belle de Jour and The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. Who were they?
3) Two American Presidents died on the same day, July 4th 1826, exactly 50 years after the ratification of a document both had been instrumental in drafting, the Declaration of Independence. Which two Presidents?
4) A legendary Italian film director and a legendary Swedish film director died on the same day, 30th July 2007. Can you name the Italian, who directed L'Avventura and La Notte amongst other notable movies, and the Swede, who directed Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal?
First Lines
The following first lines are taken from which sources? They could be books, films, plays, poems etc. I am looking for the name of the work and the writer, director, playwright, poet etc. One point for each part of the answer.
1)“Chapter One. He adored New York City. He idolized it out of all proportion.”
2)“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked.”
3)“A Spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of Communism.”
4) “Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table.”
5) “If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
Round 6
Bouquets of Barbed Wire and Grand Theft Art
1) Which composer, after sitting through the opening night of Ferdinando Paër’s Achille, allegedly congratulated the Italian composer afterwards with the words, “I like your opera, I think I will set it to music”? It has been suggested that the second movement of the critic’s Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major bears more than a passing resemblance to the funeral march of Achille.
2) Richard Strauss commented on the work of which Austrian composer, noted for his experiments in atonality and his development of the twelve-tone technique, with the following remark, “He’d be better off shovelling snow than scribbling on manuscript paper”?
3) Dorothy Parker’s review of “Atlas Shrugged” was scathing, “This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force.” Who was the unfortunate author?
4) Another target of Parker’s barbs was the actress she described with the following words, “She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B.” Which multi Academy Award-winning actress was she referring to?
5) T.S. Eliot once said that “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” He was as good as his word in “The Waste Land”, where he borrowed liberally from Chaucer, Spenser and others. The line “The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne” is a variation of a line spoken by Enobarbus (“The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne”) describing which Shakespearean heroine?
6) The Madonna of the Yarnwinder (see picture) now hangs in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, but it was stolen in 2003 from Drumlanrig Castle in Dumfries and Galloway. The painting, valued at between 45 and 50 million pounds, was recovered from a Glasgow law office in 2007. It was painted by which artist?
7) In 1877, the conductor Hans von Bulow described whose first symphony as "Beethoven's Tenth", due to perceived similarities between the work and various compositions of Beethoven?
8) In the Shanghai sequence of the film Skyfall, the femme fatale Severine uses a stolen painting as bait in an assassination plot, and the prospective purchaser of the painting is shot. The painting in question, Woman with a Fan (see picture), painted in 1919, was stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris in 2010. Who was the artist?
9) The 1899 painting Schubert at the Piano (see picture) was destroyed in 1945 when retreating Nazis incinerated Schloss Immendorf, a castle in Lower Austria where this and other works by the same artist were taken for safe keeping during the war. Which artist?
10) This architect’s style is highly self-referential .The War Museum in Dresden and the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto (see pictures) look like traditional buildings devastated by falling glass shards or, according to one critic, “architectural weapons of mass destruction.” He designed the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester. Who is he?
11) “Art is either plagiarism or revolution” is a quote from which French artist? He spent his final years in French Polynesia. His painting “Three Tahitians” is one of a number of his works available for viewing at the Scottish National Gallery.
Round 7
Cool Covers
The following songs are all cover versions. I am looking for the title of the song, the artist performing the cover version and the original artist. Points are as follows:
Q1 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (2 points), Original artist (1 point)
Q2 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (2 points), Original artist (1 point)
Q3 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (2 points), Original artist (1 point)
Q4 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (1 point), Original artist (2 points)
Q5 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (1 point), Original artist (2 points)
Q6 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (2 points), Original artist (1 point)
Q7 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (2 points), Original artist (1 point)
Q8 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (2 points), Original artist (1 point)
Q9 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (1 points), Original artist (2 point)
Q10 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (2 points), Original artist (1 point)
Q11Song title (1 point), Cover artist (1 point), Original artist (2 points)
Q12 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (2 points), Original artist (1 point)
Q13 Song title (1 point), Cover artist (1 point), Original artist (2 points)
Click to Play:
Cool Covers
Round 8
Namesakes and Elementary, My Dear Watson
1) The artist Spencer Gore became the first President of the Camden Town Group in 1911, his namesake Spencer Gore achieved which sporting first in 1877?
2) The American comedian and director Albert Brooks changed his surname because he didn't want to be confused with which other famous Albert?
3) The former Director of Speechwriting for President Obama shares both his forename and surname with the director of a popular series of movies featuring a Marvel comic book character. Which names?
4) The namesake of the U.S. Navy Commodore instrumental in opening Japan up to the West in the mid-19th century played which character in a popular American sitcom?
5) Michael Keaton was born with a different surname but changed it because he didn't want to be confused with which other famous actor?
6) Woody Allen’s
real first name is Allen, but what is his surname? He shares it with the former
name of a once-German city that is now Russian. It is the birthplace of
Immanuel Kant and a walk around the city presented Swiss mathematician Leonhard
Euler with a difficult problem.
7) The vice-president of the United
States between 1805 and 1812, serving under Presidents Jefferson and Madison,
had the same name as a legendary funk musician. Which name?
8) Donald Sutherland played a
character called Homer Simpson in a 1975 John Schlesinger directed movie
adaption of a 1939 book by Nathanael West. The book was set in Hollywood during
the Great Depression. What was it called?
Elementary, my Dear Watson
1) In The
Hound of the Baskervilles, Holmes concluded that the hound had
been made to look more terrifying by “A cunning preparation” of which element?
The atomic
number
of this element is 15.
2) A prominent
member of The Baker Street Irregulars, an organisation of Sherlock Holmes
enthusiasts founded in 1934, which science fiction writer wrote a treatise
called “Sherlock Holmes as Chemist”,
which forms part of his 1983 book “ The
Roving Mind”?
His novella “The Bicentennial Man”
was awarded both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award of
1976.
3) For one point each name the 4
actors who have played Doctor John Watson in 1) the 1939
- 1946 film
series in which Basil Rathbone played Holmes, 2) BBC TV’s Sherlock, 3)
Guy Ritchie’s 2009 film Sherlock Holmes
and the 2011 sequel Sherlock Holmes:
A Game of Shadows
and 4) The CBS series Elementary?
Round 9
Death and Taxis
1) Tony Clifton was the audience-abusing lounge singer alter ego of which American comedian? He was one of the stars of the TV series Taxi.
2) The Necronomicon,
a fictional work attributed to the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred
has subsequently cropped up in The
Evil Dead
and Friday the 13th
movie franchises, but originally appeared in The
Hound,
a 1924 short story by which writer?
3) On April 16th,
1960 Eddie Cochran was killed in Chippenham, Wiltshire when the taxi he was travelling
in blew a tire and crashed into a lamppost. Which famous “rock n roller”, the
subject of a song by Ian Dury, survived the crash?
4) What was first used in 1792 and last used in 1977?
5) Which (rather ironically named)
village in the Cotswald
district of Gloucestershire became known as one of the so-called “Thankful
Villages” after none of its combatants were lost in World War I? It became a
“Doubly Thankful Village” after it once again lost no men in World War II.
6) Stephen Fry is one of a few
celebrities known for driving a black cab privately, but which former Celebrity Big Brother
winner used much of his winnings from the show to customise his London black
cab, painting it purple, adding twenty speakers, eight amps, two DVD players,
fifteen TV screens and replacing the Taxi sign on the top with a tasteful logo
saying “Pimp”? He proudly exhibited his new creation on the MTV show Pimp My Ride UK.
7) Who was struck and killed by a
speeding automobile driven by an off-duty taxi driver as she
crossed Peachtree Street at 13th Street in Atlanta with her husband, John
Marsh, while on her way to see a movie on the evening of August 11, 1949? The
city of her death figured prominently in her most famous novel.
8) Which novel about a serial killer,
written by Patrick Süskind, was
adapted into a 2006 movie starring Ben Whishaw,
Alan Rickman and Dustin Hoffman? One of Curt Cobain’s favourite books, this
book inspired songs by Nirvana, Air, Rammstein
and an album by Marilyn Manson.
9) Michael Edwards became the first
British person inducted into a 40-strong group of “Immortals” (“Immortels”) in
2013. Which organisation conferred “immortality” upon the Professor of English
and Comparative Literature?
10) Not counting Aaran
Thomas and Gaspard Ulliel, who played Hannibal Lecter
in Hannibal Rising,
can you name the other two actors who have played the character in the
movies Manhunter, Silence of the Lambs,
Hannibal
& Red Dragon
and the
actor who was Lecter in the NBC TV series “Hannibal”? 3
points in total.
Round 10
Sage and Time
1) Which American business magnet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and one of the richest men in the world is known as The Sage of Omaha?
2) Which Scottish writer (1795-1881) originally from Ecclefechan in Dumfriesshire, the man who labelled Economics "the dismal science", was known as The Sage of Chelsea?
3) Which American satirist and critic (1880 - 1956) is referred to as The Sage of Baltimore?
4) Which deceased
American President
is
sometimes referred to as The Sage of Monticello? Monticello was
his home (and
5,000
acre plantation)
near
Charlottesville, Virginia.
5) Which English humourist, the father
of a well-known presenter of a popular TV quiz show, was known as The Sage of Cricklewood?
6) Which Scottish island, the location
for Michael Powell’s film “The
Edge of the World”, retained the Julian calendar when the
rest of Great Britain moved to the Gregorian in 1752?
7) Which Greek peninsula, which can only be
visited by male members of the Greek Orthodox Church aged 18 or over and is
exclusively inhabited by male monks and a few male workers, not only retains
the Julian calendar but uses Byzantine time, a method of timekeeping where the
new day starts at sunset?
8) In which
classic film do the first words, “Here you are, Sir, Main Level D”,
occur
21 minutes 35 seconds into the film?
9) Although Galileo may well have had
the idea first, which Dutch scientist is credited with inventing the pendulum
clock?
10) The two
novels in
question imagine alternative histories of the United
States in which Frankin D.
Roosevelt’s Presidency was cut short. In the first, which won the Hugo Award in
1963, FDR was assassinated in 1933 and America was
subsequently defeated by the Axis Powers. Japan has annexed Hawaii, California,
Alaska, Oregon and parts of Nevada and Washington. The rest
of
the USA is a Nazi puppet state. In the second novel,
published
in 2004, FDR is defeated by Charles Lindbergh in the 1940 presidential election.
These
two novelists share the same forename. One point for each author and the title
of each novel, there are 4 points available in total.
Round 11
The Final Shootout
1) Preoccupied with duelling, he
fought as many as 29 duels in his life, his death following a
winter’s evening duel near St. Petersburg in 1823 was foreshadowed in his novel
Eugene Onegin, in which the protagonist fights a duel,
with pistols in the snow, against his friend Lensky.
Which writer?
2) Deceptively simple?
Who wrote The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas?
3) A psychosomatic disorder
that causes rapid heartbeat, dizziness, fainting, confusion and
even hallucinations when an individual is exposed to art,
usually when the art is particularly beautiful or a large amount of art is in a
single place, this syndrome is named after which French author?
4) The name of which composer, who died in 1856 at the age of 46, is an anagram of Brahms Nocturne?
5) A former
Watford and AC Milan football player’s name was used as a nom de plume
by a collective of Italian authors and became a shared pseudonym for a group of
cultural activists and media pranksters. The authorship of the best-selling
book “Q”, amongst many other projects, was
rather incongruously attributed to which footballer?
6) The 1654 painting The Goldfinch
by Dutch artist Carel Fabritius,
who
died after an explosion at a gunpowder store in Delft
later that year, inspired which writer’s 2013 work, her 3rd
novel?
7) A British scientist died last week,
he is a double Nobel laureate, one of only two people to have won two Nobel
prizes in the same category (the other being John Bardeen, who won the Nobel
Prize in Physics twice). His discipline was chemistry and he won in 1958 for
his
work “on
the structure
of proteins, especially that of insulin." In 1980 he shared the
chemistry prize with Paul Berg and Walter Gilbert for his “contributions
concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids." Which
scientist?
8) Often cited as one of the most
influential examples of the so-called “New Journalism”, the American writer Gay
Talese’s
much-lauded 1966 celebrity profile (declared “the best story Esquire ever
published” in the magazine’s 70th
anniversary issue in 2003) was entitled “X has a cold” Who had a cold?
9) Commissioned to create a series of
murals for The Four Seasons restaurant in The Seagram Building in Manhattan in
1958, this abstract expressionist painter was sufficiently outraged by the
prospect of having his work exhibited there that he stated his
intention
was to paint “something that will ruin the
appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room.”
The painter completed the murals but refused to deliver them to the restaurant.
They now hang in galleries around the world including The Tate Modern
(see picture). Who was the artist?
10) “Writing
about music is like dancing about architecture” is
a quote that has been attributed to Steve Martin (amongst
others). Pritzker
Prize-winning architect Frank Gehry
combined dancing and architecture with his irreverent Dancing House
in Prague (see picture). The house was originally to be named “X and Y”, but Gehry
decided against “importing Hollywood kitsch to
Prague.”
Who were X and Y? One point each.
11) The longest ever televised golf
putt was estimated at 153 feet, made at the Dunhills
Links Championship at Kingsbarns in
Fife in 2012. It broke the existing record of 99 feet, established at
Gleneagles in 1981. Neither putt was holed by a professional golfer. For
one point each can you name the celebrities who holed the
putts?
12) Dante : Beatrice : : Petrarch : ?
13) Former Seinfeld
actress Julia-Louis-Dreyfus (see picture) plays Vice President Selina Meyer in The Thick of It
creator Armando Iannucci’s HBO
comedy series, which satirises the American political scene. What is the show
called?
14) One of the best known “Mexican
standoffs” in movie history takes place in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs
between Nice Guy Eddie, Joe and Mr White, but perhaps the most iconic three-way
standoff between gun toting rivals came at the end of a 1966 Sergio Leone film,
involving characters called Tuco,
Angel Eyes and Blondie. For one point each can you name the three actors?
